


Daughter of Men

by CountessMillarca



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Original Character(s), Other, Psychological Torture, Revenge, Short Story, past mistakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 13:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3652431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountessMillarca/pseuds/CountessMillarca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl kidnapped.<br/>A man imprisoned.<br/>Two fathers and one daughter.<br/>The past meets the future and the present is a living hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughter of Men

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a year ago but never got around to actually posting it here. Well, I guess better late than never. :D

“-ake up, wake up –”

“Mnn…” Kayla loathed the insistent hands, pushing and pulling and pressing, shaking her out of a deep slumber. Pique clogged her throat, spilled forth in a sound between a grunt and a hiss. The man’s rough voice caressed her ears with the delicacy of broken glass. Always a heavy sleeper, Kayla never appreciated being woken in such a manner, but the man seemed determined in his maddening obliviousness.

“Wake up, little girl.”

His breath ghosted over the shell of her ear, cool and hot at the same time, roused the stirrings of panic inside her. _Who – I don’t…know this voice…_ He pressed a little harder, and she reacted on pure reflex. Kayla punched him.

“Easy there, no need to get violent. You pack quite a punch for a pretty little thing…”

Blue eyes met her foggy gaze, too pale, almost glowing white in the dimness all around her. Motes of light amusement. His crude compliment succeeded in awakening her half-lucid mind. Kayla’s sleep-laden senses sharpened; her panic morphed into barely controlled hysteria. Clutching her arms around her body, she inched away from the looming shadow of the man before her, retreated farther into the room, molding herself to the cold, hard wall that greeted her back.

“ _Who_ are you? _Where_ am I?” Her questions were rushed, uttered with a vulnerable nuance that rarely coated her tone. Disorientation and fear clouded her cluttered thoughts; her lungs struggled to process the air she breathed. A chill laved her skin, clung to dips and crevices. Kayla raised her eyes to his level. His foreign, rugged features riveted her eyes.

He took a step back. Carefully. Slowly. It served to soothe her trepidation. The more steps he took, the more Kayla calmed. When he was far away, far enough that she couldn’t distinguish the color of his irises, he spoke again.

“Calm down, don't get all crazy on me now.” His voice now carried a softness Kayla would have never expected him to possess based on his harsh appearance. She blinked once, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt for now, and tried to regulate her respiration. Inhalation. Exhalation. Breath in, breath out, she took the time to will the malaise that racked her mind away.

“What happened?” Lilting, with notes of sedation, her voice filled the room after a stagnant pause. Her heart returned to its usual rhythm, the beat steady, almost deafening to her ears.

“Don't you remember?” Eyes heavy-lidded behind a mass of unruly blond curls, he leveled her with a strange stare – _too knowing_. Reclining his back against the wall, he crossed his arms over his chest and kept quiet, lips slanted in a quarter of a smile. It was then that Kayla took in her surroundings in full detail. A single bed. Bare walls. A small bathroom. No windows. A sealed door. The reality of her situation sank into her mind with the force of a violent waterfall, decimating everything in its passing. When she spoke again, her voice was thin, tremulous with the weight of her suspicions.

“I – I was late for class, so I took a shortcut through the university’s park. Then someone grabbed me from behind and shoved something wet in my face...” It all came back to her in fragmented pieces, inundated her heart with dread. Her voice died to a barely audible murmur, and she buried her hands in her hair.

“I must have been drugged and... _kidnapped_?” The last word slipped past her lips laced with near plea, and she raised her eyes, stared at the man with intensity, begging him to refute her. A grin stretched across his features, flashing teeth and wryness. Kayla bit her lower lip on instinct, feared she wouldn’t like the answer he was about to give.

“Welcome to my world, little girl.” Such resignation his tone bled, such casualness, that Kayla felt the impulse to slap him, despite not knowing his circumstances. It was unnatural, his reaction, or more accurately, the lack of one.

“That happened to you, too?”

“Kinda...” That grin again, filled with dryness and misplaced humor. If he didn’t wish to provide more information on his circumstances, Kayla wouldn’t force him. She was more interested in the next obvious question than his feigned impassiveness either way.

“Where are we?”

“Not Disneyland for sure. Besides that...beats me.”

A shrug, all that he gave her, and lips curled in a thin arc, as if he didn’t care at all. It made her want to slap him all the more so.

“Very funny...” Splenetic remark on her lips, the gap between her brows creased. Kayla’s gaze never left his eyes, as if she could pierce right through him and unravel the secret of his composure. His grin tilted, more of a smirk now, and she wondered if his acidic aloofness was a defense mechanism. A sudden thought struck her upon rumination.

“How long have you been here?”

“Look to your right.”

A languid motion of his shoulder, a dip of his bearded chin, and she wrenched her attention away, towards the ash grey wall to her right. Her mouth fell open in a silent _o_ when she could make sense of what she was seeing. Countless thin lines crisscrossed the cemented expanse of the pale wall. _Prison carvings_.

“This is…months – no… _years_?” Horrified, disbelief dragging across her tongue, drying all moisture in her mouth, she slapped a hand across her lower face.

“Don't tell me they didn't teach you arithmetic at school, little girl?” He laughed, the sound low, gruff. Kayla’s neck snapped back at him, bones cracking in her haste. She tasted his taunt and the mocking mirth within the zaffre of his eyes.

“Don't patronize me! How can you joke about this?” Her utterance was waspish, spurred by his derisive responses, unable to fathom how he could make light of his – _their_ – situation.

“It doesn't make a difference whether I joke or not, now does it?”

A heavy sigh touched her ears, then a flutter of thick lashes. His lids started to descend – but Kayla managed to catch a glimpse of the jaded glimmer in his eyes.

“That's not what I meant...” Kayla, too, lowered her gaze, spoke softly, almost apologetic. Sympathy came as naturally as breathing to her, even if he would rather circumvent the real issue by witty repartee.

“Why don't you count them? It'll help pass the time. Trust me, it's better if you keep your mind occupied.”

A well-targeted jeer, solely meant to aggravate her, elicit a bite of her anger. She realized his sarcasm for what it truly was though – a clever ruse to divert her mind, make her forget the where and how and why of it all. Still, it made no difference. Whether he gained some kind of perverse amusement by riling her up or he wished to offer half-hearted distraction, the end result remained the same. Kayla chose to keep her words to herself this time.

“Touché.” His grin retained its laziness, yet his expression was no longer light. Rueful, filled with gentleness and yearning, his eyes held her captive. Kayla cleared her throat, unease deluging her lungs, eyes narrow, made wary.  

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

His smirk sharpened with amusement – a wicked tease.

“You know, the cliché of these occasions…you remind me of someone.”

She met his smirk with her own, indulged him in this game. Kayla was almost convinced he never meant anything of what he said – half-truths, half-lies…everything that came out of his mouth.

“A past lover?”     

He laughed again, less rough than before, dripping with genuine joy, and Kayla imagined he used to laugh like this a lot prior to his confinement. It was pleasant, indicated a full-lived life, and her mind once again began to teem with questions. _Why_ were they really here? _Who_ was the perpetrator behind their predicament?

“Would you like that answer?”

“If you try anything…” Her eyes flashed with a scintilla of warning, even though she could tell he was merely stringing her along, playing with her susceptibility to his jests.

“Relax, I'm not interested in _little girls_. If you were a man though, that'd be another case...”

If she squinted hard enough, Kayla could see the dips in the hollow of his cheeks beneath the pale tuft of gold-copper spreading on either side of his face. He was laughing at her again, soundless provocation, and she assessed his comment as half-insult and half-reassurance. Kayla didn’t know if she should be amused, angered, or surprised by this. What she could do was attempt to phrase her inherent question in the least offensive manner possible, only to end up failing.

“Oh – you are…?” she all but blurted out.

He burst out in loud laughter, and her lips thinned. Kayla had been taken for a fool again. The acknowledgement somewhat chafed, if she had to be honest.

“What's with that face? Disappointed?”

“Relieved.” Sharp-voiced, she glared at him under her lashes, regretting being even remotely concerned for his sensibilities. Clearly, the man had none.

“If you say so...”

Rough-edged mirth in his voice, arms crossed and chin held high, he grinned down at her.

“Look, Mr. –” It occurred to Kayla then that she had never asked for his name in actuality. “What's your name anyway?”

“Does it matter?”

“Fine.” A nod of concession, an attrition of teeth, and Kayla picked up from where she had left off. If he wished to secrete his anonymity, Kayla would do the same – for now.

“Look here, Mr. I'm-too-cool-to-give-you-my-name, we're locked in here for god knows why or for how long, and I'd appreciate it if we could at least hold a civil conversation.”

“You won't be here for long, little girl.”

A peculiar noise spilled past his lips, sibilant, resembling a _tsk_. It served to validate her suspicions, regard him under a new light – this man _knew_ more than he claimed.

“How do you know?”

“Because you're not supposed to be here.”

Cryptic as always, he neither denied nor confirmed anything.

“And you are?” Kayla snorted, a touch of confusion and contempt on her skin, near tangible in the air between them – but then a clicking sound resounded in the small room.

“What's happening?” A stutter of words, she lost her bravado, drew back, searching for the source of the ominous noise, his prevarication all but forgotten.

“That's your ticket outta here. It's time for you to go home.”

Neck slanted, he motioned towards the twin shutters used for ventilation on the ceiling, omitting all but one of the answers she sought. Pale smoke began filling the room in ringlets, coating the atmosphere in narcotic heaviness.

“Wait! What about _you_?”

Drowsiness coursed through her body, made speech nigh impossible, but she still fought against it, struggled to move her lips, keep her eyes open.

“Go home, little girl, and forget you ever met me.”

An ocean of mystery and the warmth of lean muscles registered in Kayla's mind before her vision dimmed and she succumbed to oblivion. The sensation of being embraced, the scent of male – then nothingness.

* * *

“Did you enjoy your _gift_?”

Rich and sophisticated, the tenor of the male voice rang amidst the solitary silence, roused Cole from his musings. After the girl’s departure a few hours prior, his mind kept revisiting the pathways of memory – a life that no longer existed. Behind the impenetrable door of this room now stood another presence, wearing the guise of a man. Slow, refined, the utterance of the _man_ bled intrigue, woven with hints of cruel pleasure, but it couldn’t fool Cole. Emmanuel never visited without reason, never left without pain to inflict. Today – or tonight – would be no different.

Cole had lost perception of time during his entrapment in this cell-like room, his sole company the cultured cadence of _this_ voice – and the deep-felt rancor it evoked inside of him with each spoken sentence. It was always the same pattern since that fated night over two decades ago. _In perpetuum_. Cole loathed the sparse visitations of this man, even though he _knew_ that he would have succumbed to insanity without them. When he finally spoke, his voice was an amalgam of hoarseness and seething ache.

“That girl –”

Wraith-like fingers gripped at his heart. His chest constricted, his sentence never finished. Anguish – heavy, much too heavy, consuming – and Cole found himself questioning if he truly wished to know the answer.

“Oh? Did you figure it out? Blood calls to blood, as they say. Yes, she's your daughter – or should I say _mine_ now?”

A low chuckle, ebon-colored and utterly unpalatable. Emmanuel took delight in reminding him of that which he could never take back, Cole was well aware, but he could never truly digest its sound.

“Why did you let me meet her?”

Teeth gritted, eyes aflame with emotion now, Cole glared at the metallic barrier between them. Bile gathered in the pit of his stomach, churned, and he welcomed it, let it fester, melt his insides – sepsis, corrosion from the inside out.

Cole could never make sense of Emmanuel’s motives, fathom the intricate thought patterns of the other man – but he _had_ tried, had tainted himself in his efforts, numerous times, despite being averse to everything Emmanuel was. He had come to one simple conclusion, though. Emmanuel walked a fine line between terrible clarity and conscious lunacy. Cole might have been the trigger for unbinding the shackles within Emmanuel’s mind, yet the man would have snapped at some point in time without Cole’s unwitting assistance – Cole was certain of this fact.

“Useless sentimentality, perhaps? Family _should_ be together around this time of the year, no?”

A sigh, deceptively sweet, drowned by layers and layers of lead and stone. Cole could almost see Emmanuel’s smile, drink its gentleness – a sip of poison, culminated by years of madness-driven delusion.

 _Family – right!_ Cole had been wrenched from his family before he even had the chance to witness his daughter’s birth. His wife, his daughter, his family – they belonged to Emmanuel. Merely one _foolish_ night of merry drinking had robbed Emmanuel of _his_ family. The answer he had come to in order to kill his grief had been to steal Cole’s family, take what had been taken. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.

Because Cole had been the stupid drunk behind the wheel.

“Would you look at the time? The police should be calling anytime now with news of _my_ beloved daughter. I’m afraid I must bid you adieu for now.”

The way Emmanuel articulated this, the maleficent ebullience of the words, unleashed Cole’s rage. He snarled, became the beast, traded places with his nemesis – and Emmanuel laughed.

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Cole.”


End file.
